A pandemic might seem the wrong time to dive into the restaurant business, but the Beattie family thinks the water is just fine.
In fact, the water — Mascoma Lake — figures prominently into why the Beatties have taken the plunge.
The Beatties — dad Billy, mom Dawn, eldest daughter Gabby, son Max, middle daughter Rebecca, youngest Sarah, grandpa Bill, grandma Melissa, Uncle Scott and Aunt Joanie — are the new owners of The Baited Hook, the popular diner on Mascoma Lake in Lebanon, across from the Mascoma Lake Campground.
“It’s like Happy Days around here,” father Billy Beattie said the other day, referring to the 1970s sitcom in which a neighborhood diner drew characters together in memorable times.
The Beatties may be new to the restaurant business, but they are an old family around Mascoma Lake who have enjoyed The Baited Hook for four generations.
When The Baited Hook failed to open by Memorial Day, panic broke out around the lake. The casual restaurant has been a favorite summer dining spot for boaters, campers, vacationers and year-round residents since the 1930s.
Then on July 22, owner Patty Carroll announced on Facebook that after 34 years it was “time to pass the torch” and that Carroll’s family had sold the restaurant to the Beatties — whom she described as “Baited Hook family” who will “continue its tradition.”
“I cannot express how happy we all are about this,” Carroll said.
Since then the Beatties have thrown themselves into running The Baited Hook, with a menu item named after everyone in the family: “Grampy’s BLT,” “Becca’s Buffalo Chick,” “Gabby’s Chocolate Creation,” “The Max Burger.”
“The most fun part was taste-testing everything for a month before opening,” Billy Beattie confided.
The Beattie family’s association with Mascoma Lake goes back to 1932, when Billy Beattie’s grandparents, Joseph and Angelina DePalo, purchased a camp at the lake. Generations of DePalo and Beattie cousins frequented The Baited Hook.
Billy Beattie was in the business of selling point-of-sale systems to retail stores, and for a while the Beatties even lived next door, where their kids pretended to sell ice cream out their window just like the restaurant did.
But this past spring, knowing the Carrolls were ready to retire, he approached them about buying the restaurant. The deal wrapped up quickly and the Beatties used the COVID-19 downtime to get the restaurant ready for a late-season opening.
“I said, ‘OK, guys, we’re not playing ice cream window anymore. This is real,’ ” Billy Beattie recalled with a laugh.
Pandemic precautions are limiting the seating inside the restaurant, but most diners are enjoying their orders at picnic tables outside, on the dock or on their boats. The first week they were open, they served 1,300 orders to 500 customers, Beattie said.
And what’s popular on the menu? It’s no contest.
“The whole-belly clams are the Tom Brady of our roster,” Beattie said.
■ Hanover stylist Heather Blake, who closed her salon on South Main Street in January, has reopened Tanzi’s Salon on the upper level of Jim Rubens’ Hanover Park building on Lebanon Street. Joining Blake is her longtime associate Sarah Wilkins.
“We are keeping it small, two stylists working at a time. Wearing masks and washing hands and hair!” Blake posted on Facebook.
■ Lynn and Karen Caple, the couple and longtime Upper Valley caterers who turned their adoption of healthy eating habits into a home delivery meal service called Let Us Do Lunch more than a year before COVID-19 inspired other area restaurants to do the same, have closed their kitchen that was located on Route 5 in Wilder.
■ The $200,000 facelift at the Wendy’s fast food restaurant on Route 12A in West Lebanon looks to be completed as construction crews have left the site. The refurbishing project included tearing down a side dining area and replacing it with an outdoor patio on the backside.
■ Vermont’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in July notched down to 8.3% from 9.5% in June. New Hampshire jobless rate was 8.1% in July.
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